


Paradox II: The Willing Victim

by Viridian5



Series: Paradox [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Christmas, Drama, Holiday, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-12-26
Updated: 1998-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-02 08:10:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder and Krycek have good reasons for what they're doing.  They think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradox II: The Willing Victim

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the wise and wonderful Feklar for providing great beta, reveling in the destruction with Alex, and reminding me to be specific about my vans.
> 
> I blocked out "A Very Brady Christmas" on my grandmother's blaring TV while writing parts of this by playing _The Saint_ soundtrack on my headphones. Do you know that I hear slightly different lyrics every time I listen to Sneaker Pimps' "6 Underground (Nellee Hooper Edit)" or that fast-forwarding through Moby's "Oil" on CD lets you hear "Three Blind Mice"? Anyway, the album (and fond memories of listening to it as we drove home from the Philadelphia Sisters of Mercy concert June '97 at 5 a.m.) influenced the mood here.
> 
> The Christmas arrangement I mentioned here actually existed and could be found on a rooftop in Queens.

_"How did you dare to become so real..."_  
  -- "Out of My Mind" by Duran Duran  
\-----------------------------------------------------------

Mulder rested his head back against the seat and saw the lights of gaudy, cheerful Christmas decorations outside smear together from the movement of the minivan and spinning in his head. He knew it was a bad sign that his captors let him, no matter how incapacitated, see where they were going. They would probably kill him when they didn't need anything else from him. Considering how he felt right now, he couldn't quite bring himself to care.

Krycek had joked about a "never-ending interrogation." Now Mulder couldn't pull himself free of the cycle.

Krycek. Only this morning Mulder's former partner had dropped him off after the last interrogation. Now another group wanted to know what Mulder had told the first group.

//I should have taken up Scully's offer to stay with her until I was well, but I was too damned busy being noble. "Oh, no, I don't want to impose." Stupid.//

But they might have taken Scully too if he'd stayed with her. Then again, they wouldn't have been able to incapacitate Scully as quickly as they had him just by bouncing _her_ head against the floor a few times. And maybe she would have been harder to disarm than he had been. He'd barely had time to use the gun he'd hidden under his pillow.

With all the times in the past he'd already gotten his head knocked around, he was surprised he hadn't sustained permanent damage already. These bastards had taken advantage of an injury sustained only a few days again to bring him down. Combine that with the drugs Mulder still hadn't worked his way out from under yet, and he might as well as have handed himself over to these people with a bow tied around his neck, a Christmas present five days early.

His head spun. //And all the king's horses (and what _would_ the horses do?) and all the king's men couldn't put his head back together again. So they scooped it up, cooked it, and made an omelet.//

All the lights--glowing, plastic figures and flashing, multi-colored bulbs--just outside the window stabbed his brain. Pretty as they were, they only reminded him that They were always accompanied by light when They came to get you. You could hide in the dark at least.

"There's someone standing in the road in front of us," the driver said.

"Keep going. He'll get out of the way or get run down!"

"He has a gun!"

Mulder heard shattering glass and grunts of pain, accompanied by a rush of winter air. As the minivan started to swerve, his guard let go of his arm. Mulder threw himself at the door, opened it, and flung himself into the night, hopefully toward a lawn.

His arms had gone up to protect his head, but he still hit so hard he felt a shock throughout his body. He rolled on cold, icy ground until something stopped him. Air returned to his lungs in a painful rush. He heard more gunshots and opened his eyes to a surprisingly bright world. Once his vision cleared, he looked around to make sure he was in one piece, then saw his surroundings.

A manger--flanked by glowing, plastic Mary and Joseph figures-- had stopped his progress. But instead of being attended by the Three Wise Men, Jesus' birth was being witnessed by Mickey and Minnie Mouse, a Santa-suited Winnie the Pooh and Snoopy, a teddy bear, Frosty the Snowman, and Santa Claus himself. And Mulder, lying in his worn-out sweats and bare feet, stretched out on the unforgiving, frozen ground like a human sacrifice in front of the radiant child.

He started to laugh. It hurt like hell, but he couldn't help himself. He would feel like shit later, but for now he felt energized, no doubt from the adrenaline rush, and everything seemed funny.

Then the night exploded with sound, and Mulder saw Krycek walking toward him. //He just saved my life _again_?// The events of the last day came rushing back, and he tried to figure out exactly what it was that he felt.

Four days of oblivion prior to last night for Mulder, but it seemed that Krycek had been there through it all and knew everything that had happened. Mulder needed to know what had been done to him. He had to find a way to get Krycek to tell him, and he had an idea...

It was doable, and so was Krycek... Mulder tried to ignore the sudden heat that suffused him, but even that seemed funny at the moment. //And so my sanity goes...//

******************************************************

Still shooting, Alex stepped out of the minivan's path at the last second and grinned as it overturned and hit a parked car with a loud crunch of metal and shattering of glass. The car's alarm went off, wailing, seconds later. He didn't need the noise, but he couldn't help his glee at the destruction.

Alex ran to where Mulder had thrown himself clear. It couldn't have gone better if they'd planned it. Then Alex saw Mulder.

Alex had no time to appreciate the sight at that moment, but he burned it into his mind to enjoy later. The cheap, glowing figures were set in an innocently profane manner with Mulder lying in front of them, the only one who couldn't light up. The agent writhed with laughter and looked more demented than Alex had ever seen him. His thin, worn-out sweatpants had pulled down a bit while his cut-off sweatshirt had pulled up during his roll to safety, revealing an expanse of pale, shivering skin occasionally marked with bruises. The original head wound had broken open and started to bleed again, either from rough handling during his pick-up or his risky escape. He looked delicious and insane and so damned available for the taking...

But Alex fought down the temptation to take Mulder right there, outside, in the open, among the lighted Christmas decorations, since he heard neighbors starting to come out from all the noise. Alex helped Mulder--who, for once, didn't fight him--up off the icy ground and over to his SUV. "Get in, and ask questions later!" Alex yelled as he slammed the door.

Alex got in and hit the accelerator. When they had gotten far enough away that they could no longer hear the car alarm, Mulder said, "It's later. You knew this would happen and stuck around to prevent them from interrogating me, didn't you?" Mulder's voice sounded warm and husky and _different_ somehow.

Alex tried to figure out what it meant, but who knew what went on in that cracked head? "Yeah, but since I'm just one person I had to wait until I head an opportunity to take them all down at once."

Mulder nodded. "So where are we going now? Back to the cabin?"

When he noticed Mulder shivering, Alex turned up the heat. "You'll find out."

Mulder rested his head back against the seat and shuddered in silence the rest of the way to the motel. Alex got out first and handed his leather jacket over to the agent, who certainly needed it more. As Mulder walked gingerly and with a limp, Alex finally noticed his bare feet and sighed at the thought of bruises and cuts slowing him down. Surprisingly, he hadn't said a word in complaint.

With the chill cutting through his dark blue sweater, Alex unlocked the door and got them inside as quickly as possible. Mulder said, "I'm surprised you didn't want to have your gun ready walking in."

"I have a few tell-tales on the door. Simple things. None of them were disturbed, and I didn't hear anything inside."

Mulder put his hand to his head and sighed as it came away reddened with flakes of blood. "It could have been worse, I guess. I could have hit a mailbox, or the ground could have been icy mud..."

Alex was about to suggest that Mulder go into the bathroom to soak the dirt from those bare feet and the scrapes he'd seen on the agent's arms, but his throat closed up at a sudden trill of lust. He smelled a sharp tang of winter cold, the darkness of earth, the iron richness of blood, the faint salt of sleep-sweat, and his own leather, all combined with Mulder's own scent. Did he want that obliterated by soap? No, not at all.

Mulder turned to look at Alex suddenly, catching him staring, and it felt like some rope binding them together drew taut. Mulder's dilated pupils looked like darkness devouring the pine and amber of his eyes. The crimson of dried blood at the side of his head seemed to accent the slightly blue-tinged cold-pallor of his face. He licked purple lips, and everything in his posture seemed to be an invitation. Alex had never seen the man look so damned _hungry_.

They'd each, instinctively, come one step closer to one another, so near that they each breathed the other's air. Mulder moved closer still and paralyzed Alex in an assault of cold skin and lips paired with a hot tongue. They met mouth to mouth and hip to hip, embracing with an almost harsh grip, stroking against one another for contact and friction and warmth...

Alex desperately pulled his mouth away for breath and a moment to think. He had the Mulder he wanted, and that made him suspicious. Mulder made a soft, low sound of disappointment and gasped, "Alex..."

//"Call me 'Alex,'" I'd whispered to him as he'd struggled under the weight of the drugs...//

Alex looked Mulder over for signs of major head trauma and found none. He didn't seem to be one of those alien shapeshifters. But he'd thrown himself to the floor and been willing to spend the night there, out in the cold, to avoid this just last night.

As much as Alex wanted to believe and take advantage of this sudden change of heart, he couldn't accept it unchallenged. "Why are you doing this, Mulder?"

Mulder breathed hard against him, so close that each shudder rippled through him as well. "I had time to think today..." Mulder made thinking sound like an intensely sensual activity.

Thinking and talking were two things Alex really didn't want to do at the moment, but he wanted to be _sure_ about Mulder. "And?"

"It got me nowhere." Mulder rubbed his spiky hair against Alex's neck. "I wanted you last night, but the drugs... I didn't know if it was me, can you understand that?"

Alex remembered something dark and alien slithering through his own veins and mind, forcing him down and letting him watch helplessly as it gave away all his advantages and left him in that silo to die... He tried to keep all that terror and horror locked down where Mulder wouldn't notice, but he wasn't sure if he succeeded, not with the other man all but draped on him, able to feel the slightest tremor...

"Yes," Alex said, with no trace in his voice of how well he understood, "and I wouldn't want you that way. I didn't do anything to you while you were under that would make you throw yourself at me." Of course not. That kind of cheating took all the fun out of it. While it would let him have Mulder, he wouldn't _truly_ have Mulder, and that violated the whole point.

Mulder shivered. "That's such a relief." Then he grinned and rubbed his nose against Alex's in an Eskimo kiss. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that. You have such a strangely cute nose..."

Displays of hot, almost mindless passion Alex could deal with. Lunatic gestures of affection gave him an odd but far from unpleasant feeling in his stomach. Something to guard against.

Alex still wasn't quite satisfied with Mulder's motives. Alex pinned the agent up against the wall and recited the last four days' drug-induced confessions: the truths, the half-truths, and the outright lies. That Alex revealed these things in a hot torrent, breathing against his neck and grinding him into the wall at the same time, could surely provide only a little incentive to go further...

Alex found it hard to gather the will to move back and away, but he did so. "What now?" The litany had left his voice sounding even hoarser, smokier, than usual, but he felt it only added to his appeal.

Dazed, breathing hard, his eyes like devouring black holes, Mulder stared for a moment before sliding down to his knees. Mulder pulled up Alex's sweater and tongued his navel before unfastening his jeans and going lower. The combination of chilled Mulder and hot tongue against his skin drove him insane. The agent lavished long, slow strokes of that tongue down his cock, making him whimper, before taking it in deep, sucking and nipping. Alex groaned as he felt long fingers stroke his balls as well.

"Yes..." Alex couldn't help hissing. "No. No, you don't get to stroke yourself." Mulder had slid his thin sweatpants down to reveal nothing on beneath them...

Mulder stopped everything he was doing and looked up. He let Alex's shaft fall from his mouth with a wet pop, let it slide down his swollen bottom lip... "No?"

"I'll take care of that later."

Eyes burning with an unholy fire, Mulder deep-throated him again, sucking and stroking. //Mulder, on his knees, wanton and servicing me.// Alex didn't last very long, but, in a way, he felt that the foreplay for this had started four days ago when he'd found Mulder lying, bloody and near death, in the snow. By that standard...

Mulder continued to suckle for a while longer then took Alex's legs out from under him at the knees, dropping him to the bed. The agent, still kneeling on the floor, regarded him with almost feral eyes. Healthy color had come back to Mulder's face and lips. //I brought him back to life,// Alex thought, then smirked. Not that corpsely Mulder hadn't been a kick too...

"You said you'd take care of me, Alex."

//That wasn't quite what I promised.// Alex grinned. "I will. Get up here. I want you to fuck me."

Mulder looked surprised. "You want--"

"Yeah."

Alex had his reasons. Mulder, being his rationalizing self and a government employee, might manage to slither away from culpability for that blowjob. But _this_ would be hard to disavow and would provide an irrevocable link between them.

//And I _want_ this.//

Mulder kicked off his sweatpants before divesting Alex of boots, jeans, and underwear. The agent pulled up Alex's sweater just far enough to leave his nipples bare and fetter his arm and prosthesis a bit.

Alex struggled at that. "What the hell are you--"

Mulder nibbled one hard, rosy nipple with his teeth while pinching the other. He finally let them go and moved further up, covering Alex entirely. Alex hissed as leather, warm metal tabs, and worn cotton slid against his skin and gasped when their cocks kissed. Mulder's wide-eyed face engulfed his vision. The agent loomed over him and blocked the light.

"Don't worry. You can still move them. A bit. I just thought you might like to feel your jacket against your skin."

To prove Mulder's assertion to himself, Alex took off his right glove with his teeth, then let his fingers drift along Mulder's jaw to feel warming skin, bruises, evening stubble, and a stubborn chin, before sighing when Mulder's tongue flickered out to touch his fingers. They trailed down until they clenched in the leather of his own jacket, worn now by his lover.

"Do you have--" Mulder asked, so softly.

"In the jacket."

Mulder sheathed himself but set the slick aside. He slowly started to slide back off the bed, stroking whatever flesh he could reach as he went, before disappearing from Alex's easy view. He could still be felt though, and suddenly in a place Alex had never expected. His tongue circled and teased seemingly for an eternity before thrusting in.

Even as Alex drowned under the sensations, he expected to wake up at any second. This couldn't be his Mulder or his life. But he had no problems with reveling in it while it lasted, especially as slick fingers stroked in. He encouraged Mulder by spreading his legs further and moving to draw the fingers in as deeply as possible.

Then they pulled out before Mulder came up and slowly thrust in one inch at a time, obviously struggling not to lose it too soon. Pleasure and pain burned through Alex, making him gasp, "Just give it to me!" The next stroke just about made his teeth rattle, and it felt so damned good. He wrapped himself tight around Mulder and gloried in every hard thrust, every rasp of the zipper over his bare skin, and every glide of Mulder's ribs over his aching cock. Once in a while he lapped at the dried blood on the agent's temple until the wound reopened. When Alex's tongue hit the raw, open spot, Mulder exploded into him with a scream that brought him over too.

Tangled together and trembling, they just breathed for a while. "You're sick," Mulder gasped.

Alex smiled. "I'm sick? Who got off on it?" Mulder shuddered a little harder. "Regrets?" //Here's where the dream ends. Damned shame.// Alex ignored the tightness in his chest.

"Lots. About so many different things." But Mulder rubbed the side of his face against Alex's sweater before fading out.

It scared the hell out of Alex until he realized the kind of exhaustion Mulder had to have been working under, recovering from the last, heavily drugged, four days and being dragged from his sleep by thugs intent on making him relive them. It had been so hard watching those four days unfold, witnessing the abuse and interrogation. //But he would have died if I hadn't found him, and those bastards would have been so much harder on him if I hadn't been there. I saved him again tonight.//

Mulder's eyelids fluttered, and he smiled in his sleep as Alex stroked his hair. //You're still here. I keep expecting that piano to come plunging out of the sky to hit me, just so I don't get overconfident in my luck, but you're still here.// Alex got up and cleaned them both up before getting a blanket from the other twin bed in the room and draping it over them. Warm and secure, Alex turned off the light and followed Mulder into sleep.

******************************************************

Mulder floated back up to consciousness with the scent of sex and Alex, two far from dissimilar things, surrounding him. //I really did that. And enjoyed it thoroughly. The way he felt as I--

//But I got what I wanted; he told me what I wanted to know. I think. I don't have to be here anymore.//

Something knotted in his gut. //How can I know it's the truth? I can't. Maybe I should stick around a while longer, see what else I can get from him. I mean, see what else I can get him to say.//

Alex stirred against him and murmured something into his neck. Mulder smiled at the usually wary killer lying so trusting next to him. //I can't go. I'm not done with him yet.//

### End


End file.
